I’m late to the party here, but I figured I’d weigh in on the Max Gogarty incident at the Guardian. If you missed it, here’s a quick recap: a 19 year old wrote a not-very-good column for the Guardian’s Travelog section about his upcoming gap year trip to Thailand; comments discovered that his dad was a travel writer for the Guardian and smelt nepotism rather than talent in the commissioning of the column; all hell broke loose in the comments thread; senior Guardian writers weighed in, closed comments, and Max’s blog was abandoned after just the one sensational entry.

Now that the dust has settled on the whole incident, it all seems slightly silly. There’s nothing particularly outrageous about any of it: the blog wasn’t particularly well-written, but then lots of the Guardian, and indeed lots of Internet blogs, aren’t. (Though the Guardian piece was at least paid, so there’s a reasonable assumption of quality there.) That Max Gogarty’s father is also a freelance writer for the Guardian also isn’t particularly shocking or immoral - sure, Max probably had access to contacts your average 19 year old on the street doesn’t, but then why should that stop him from trying to do something he wants to do, career-wise? And it’s really, really not shocking or unusual that a pack of Guardian commenters went ballistic.

Read any article or blog on the Guardian’s website and you’ll find all sorts of vitriolic comments - maybe some of them are warranted, maybe not, but the point is, they’re inescapable. It’s not just the Guardian, either; it’s any website on the Internet where strong opinions are expressed, and there’s enough traffic to spark a reaction. Really, attracting Internet trolls isn’t a particularly mysterious process - you just need traffic, and then drama is practically guaranteed.

There have been all sorts of studies carried out and theories espoused as to what it is about the anonymity of the Internet that causes perfectly rational people to get so angry and rude, but then again, there have been lots of studies done and theories espoused about why it is that people like chocolate. The thing about people is, a lot of them are angry and loud in real life. A lot more would like to be angry and loud, but never quite seem to have the nerve, or to be able to think of the perfect comeback at the perfect moment. Taking away any consequences and giving people time to respond to something means all that vitriol can spill freely. The Internet doesn’t make people more cruel; it just takes away the immediate consequences of that cruelty. (Perhaps “cruel” is the wrong word: sometimes, anger is absolutely the correct response to a situation or statement, and sometimes that anger can more easily be expressed online than in person, and that’s not a bad thing.)

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Max Gogarty incident was the response of the Guardian’s editors: the travel editor and the online editor both published blogs about the incident, expressing shock and disappointment over the appalling treatment of poor Max. Seems his trip to India was slightly marred by the outpouring of hatred online, and his blog was cancelled to save his feelings. The whole thing felt slightly like the Guardian was scolding its readers as if they were naughty children, or school playground bullies. (Those follow up blogs attracted plenty of comments, too, for the record.) But really, whose fault was it that an article was published that enraged the paper’s readership? From where I’m sitting, now, post-incident, safely not in charge of any department of the Guardian at all, it seems fairly obvious that an article by a privileged teenager about his merry-yet-clichéd jaunt abroad was going to cause the average Guardian reader to fly into a complete rage - and surely they know their demographic far better than I do.

Then again, wearing my cynical hat, the whole incident got a lot more attention from the blogosphere than most Guardian blog posts. And what’s the point of a website - or a newspaper - if no-one reads it?

While I’m on the subject of angry people on the Internet, I might as well talk about Anonymous for a bit. The online group, whose previous targets included feminist blogs, has turned its attention to Scientology; a couple of weeks ago, a protest was organised outside a couple of Scientology buildings in London, including the one just up the road on Tottenham Court Road. Protesters wore masks based on the one in V for Vendetta, ate cake, danced to Rick Astley, and generally made Internet jokes - and campaigned against Scientology at the same time. Websites used to plan and co-ordinate the events warned potential attendees that they’d have to be on their best behaviour to avoid being moved along by the police, so there wasn’t any violence involved, but seeing well-known Internet memes (including LOLcats on placards and Portal jokes) making the leap into reality was … well, strange, to say the least.

Whether or not their cause is worthwhile, there’s something unsettling about these protests - possibly because it’s generally assumed that people will say things online that they would never back up in reality. It’s easy to say that because something’s happening online, it doesn’t really matter; that it’s just the Internet, that it’s not real. Both the Gogarty incident and the Anonymous Scientology protests, though, suggest that’s really not the case. Like Soylent Green, the Internet - or at least commenters and posters on it - is people.